Central Florida residents still struggle with Hurricane Milton debris as another tropical system looms

WINTER PARK, Fla. - With a new tropical system potentially threatening Florida in the coming days, the area still bears the scars from Hurricane Milton, with streets lined with debris more than a month after the storm swept through.

In Winter Park, piles of broken branches and logs litter neighborhoods like Kingswood Manor, where residents worry that leftover debris could become dangerous projectiles in the next storm. Homeowners, frustrated and concerned, are urging city officials to clear the streets before another round of severe weather strikes.

Michael Stevens, a Winter Park resident, has had a mound of debris sitting in his yard since the hurricane hit.

"We've been trying to take what we can and put it in the waste bin," he said. But for Stevens, a cancer patient, the physical toll of clearing debris is daunting. "I am a cancer patient and the only help I can get is to pay somebody to do yard work for me," he explained.

Stevens is not alone. Across Orange County, many residents are dealing with similar remnants of the storm. For some, it's a nuisance they've taken on themselves, but for others like Stevens, removing the debris isn't an easy or affordable option.

"I just want to get rid of it because the treatments make me pretty weak, and I have to pay somebody to do it, so that is costing me more money," he said.

MORE STORIES: City of Orlando officials say they're working around the clock to address the debris, with crews and contractors operating seven days a week. Still, residents may only see part of their debris collected at a time, the city explained.

For now, Stevens and others are left with a choice: wait for municipal help or pay for private removal.

"I remember with [Hurricane] Ian, we had a lot of stuff down, and I don't remember it taking this long," Stevens said, comparing this cleanup to a previous storm.

With another storm system on the horizon, the city advises residents to secure any remaining debris themselves or take it off the curb if collection hasn't yet reached them.

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"We used to hate elephants a lot," Kenyan farmer Charity Mwangome says, pausing from her work under the shade of a baobab tree.The bees humming in the background are part of the reason why her hatred has dimmed.The diminutive 58-year-old said rapacious elephants would often destroy months of work in her farmland that sits between two parts of Kenya's world-renowned Tsavo National Park.Beloved by tourists - who contribute around 10 percent of Kenya's GDP - the animals are loathed by most local farmers, who form the backbone of the nation's economy.Elephant conservation has been a roaring success: numbers in Tsavo rose from around 6,000 in the mid-1990s to almost 15,000 elephants in 2021, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).But the human population also expanded, encroaching on grazing and migration routes for the herds.Resulting clashes are becoming the number one cause of elephant deaths, says KWS.Refused compensation when she lost her crops, Mwangome admits she was mad with the conservationists. But a long-running project by charity Save the Elephants offered her an unlikely solution - deterring some of nature's biggest animals with some of its smallest: African honeybees.Cheery yellow beehive fences now protect several local plots, including Mwangome's. A nine-year study published last month found that elephants avoided farms with the ferocious bees 86 percent of the time."The beehive fences came to our rescue," said Mwangome.- Hacking nature -The deep humming of 70,000 bees is enough to make many flee, including a six-tonne elephant, but Loise Kawira calmly removes a tray in her apiary to demonstrate the intricate combs of wax and honey.Kawira, who joined Save the Elephants in 2021 as their consultant beekeeper, trains and monitors farmers in the delicate art.The project supports 49 farmers, whose plots are surrounded by 15 connected hives. Each is strung on greased wire a few metres off the ground, which protects them from badgers and insects, but also means they shake when disturbed by a hungry elephant. "Once the elephants hear the sound of the bees and the smell, they run away," Kawira told AFP."It hacks the interaction between elephants and bees," added Ewan Brennan, local project coordinator. It has been effective, but recent droughts, exacerbated by climate change, have raised challenges."(In) the total heat, the dryness, bees have absconded," said Kawira.It is also expensive - about 150,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,100) to install hives - well beyond the means of subsistence farmers, though the project organisers say it is still cheaper than electric fences.- 'I was going to die' -Just moments after AFP arrived at Mwanajuma Kibula's farm, which abuts one of the Tsavo parks, her beehive fence had seen off an elephant.The five-tonne animal, its skin caked in red mud, rumbled into the area and then did an abrupt about-face. "I know my crops are protected," Kibula said with palpable relief.Kibula, 48, also harvests honey twice a year from her hives, making 450 shillings per jar - enough to pay school fees for her children.She is fortunate to have protection from the biggest land mammals on Earth."An elephant ripped off my roof, I had to hide under the bed because I knew I was going to die," said a less-fortunate neighbour, Hendrita Mwalada, 67.For those who can't afford bees, Save the Elephants offers other solutions, such as metal-sheet fences that clatter when shaken by approaching elephants, and diesel- or chilli-soaked rags that deter them. It is not always enough. "I have tried planting but every time the crops are ready, the elephants come and destroy the crops," Mwalada told AFP."That has been the story of my life, a life full of too much struggling."ra-rbu/er/kjm